Published: January 22, 2008 08:11 pm      

Take me to your soda jerk

‘Witnesses,’ gawkers help Dublin’s Dr Pepper-driven economy live long and

DUBLIN — It’s a load of nonsense, this talk of space ships and ETs, if you ask me. I’ve no interest in the veracity of such unless the visitors look like “Grey’s Anatomy” star Katherine Heigl, who played an alien on “Roswell.” In which case I say, bring on the invasion and land it in Cleburne.

At any rate, recent reports of UFOs hovering about the Stephenville area have drawn worldwide attention. Makes sense. If I could go anywhere and travel great distances, that would be my destination of choice. As opposed to say, Australia or Tahiti. Just as well. I’ve been itching for a road trip, and the paper probably wouldn’t fund a trip Down Under anyway.

The number of reported sightings convinced the Mutual UFO Network, or MUFON, that a Saturday trip to Dublin was in order so its leaders could interview witnesses and see what’s what. I certainly didn’t want to miss out on the fun.

To gather preliminary information, I called MUFON’s Colorado headquarters a few days before Saturday.

“Press 1 to report a UFO sighting, press 2 if you’ve been abducted,” a professional-sounding voice on the company answering service said. It gave no options for aliens reporting in, unfortunately.



Leaving planet Cleburne

It’s a bit of a drive to Dublin, and appropriate road-trip music is needed. My iPod plays “2000 Light Years From Home” by the Rolling Stones; “Interstellar Overdrive” by Pink Floyd and “Flying Saucer Rock ‘n’ Roll” by Billy Lee Riley. Those three exhaust my supply of outer-space-themed music shortly before I reach Bono. I spend the rest of the trip rocking a mix of Sly and the Family Stone and C-Span radio while wondering what’s good eating in Dublin and looking forward to their famous Dr Pepper.

Pretty scenery out this way. The cows I pass don’t look overly worried, and I see no obvious crop circles. Camera at the ready, I occasionally scan the skies. Just in case.



Touching down

Cazart! It’s a virtual sea of humanity. Hundreds of people — the kooks, the curious and the believers — mill with bemused town folk. First order of business is a convenience-store stop for a Dublin Dr Pepper and a local paper.

“Wanna read about the aliens, huh?” the clerk asks as I slap The Dublin Citizen on the counter. “It’s just lights is all it is. I guarantee ya.”

Little flying saucers dot the I’s on the paper’s masthead. An ominous sign.

I head to the Dublin Rotary Club, where the interviews are scheduled, and I help club member Pat Leatherwood wheel a popcorn machine into the building.

“We look at it as, whether you believe in UFOs or not, we’ve got visitors coming, and we just want to welcome them and show Dublin off and give a nice impression,” Leatherwood said.

Club members distribute free popcorn and Dr Pepper throughout the day. “You know, I heard the UFO resembled a Dr Pepper can,” Leatherwood said.

Leatherwood expressed amazement over the story’s rapid spread and said a military friend serving in Afghanistan awoke him with news of the sightings before he had a chance to see the local papers. Leatherwood later marveled over the crowds descending on Dublin.

“We thought maybe 40 to 50 people,” Leatherwood said. “We counted about 500 in here. Who knows outside?”

Inside the Rotary building MUFON Assistant State Director Steve Hudgons and other MUFON associates scan the growing crowd outside while setting up.

“We run into weirdoes, yeah,” Hudgons said “They think we’re weird, but no. I’m just afraid we’re going to have people show up dressed like spacemen. I’m expecting a circus.”

Hudgons gets his wish.

T-shirts proclaiming Stephenville to be the UFO capital of Texas abound. Brownwood resident Michael Uhlig’s homemade shirt reads “UFOs are bigger in Texas.” Not to be outdone, Old Doc’s Soda Shop employees in the Dr Pepper plant are selling shirts with a flying saucer sucking up cans of Dublin Dr Pepper.

“We got 11 dozen in yesterday and sold out in two hours and had to get an emergency order in so we’d have some to sell today,” employee Mark Tucker said.

Two men wearing foil hats stand on the corner holding signs that read “Nanu Nanu” and “E.T. phone home” to passing traffic. Fort Worth residents Parks Blackwell and Katherine Giuliani walk around downtown with their dogs Dudley and Derby. Both dogs wear aluminum-foil cones around their heads and hale from the planet Woolftron, Blackwell and Giuliani said.

Really though they just came for fun, both women said, and they drove to Dublin after finding nothing of interest in Stephenville.

Truth be told, Stephenville dropped the ball and lost a lot of potential tourist dollars.

“We stole this from Stephenville,” Rotary member Jeff Pendleton said with a laugh. “They only offered MUFON a cattle-sale barn out of town. We heard that and offered the Rotary, which is warmer and has free Dr Pepper.”

Local merchants gushed over the increased business. If town leaders are smart, they’ll play the UFO angle to the hilt and ride the shooting star right into an annual festival.



Close encounters

with something

While the curious had a ball, the MUFON reps got down to business.

“In the entire state of Texas we average three or four sightings a month, so this is a definite spike and the most we’ve had since [a 1995 incident near Chicago],” Hudgons said.

What makes this different is the number of people in different places and the number of apparently credible people who reported seeing something, he said.

“‘UFO’ doesn’t mean ‘spaceship’ necessarily,” said Robert Powell, MUFON’s director of research. “It means a flying object people saw and can’t identify. We’re open minded and curious but approach things through the scientific method and let the chips fall where they may. If it turns out to be something explainable, so be it, and it often does.”

The group quickly runs out of the 50 statement forms they ask witnesses to fill out and have to copy more. They interview 75 to 100 witnesses, Hudgons estimates. MUFON members expect the investigation to take a year to complete.

Onlookers crowd around Margie Galvez of Brownwood as she plays video through her laptop of what she claims to be mysterious lights in her backyard. Could be that. Could be a duck eating ice cream given what I can decipher from the grainy black and white footage. Sean Kiel, a truck driver from Kentucky, draws another large crowd with pictures of, well, something snapped on his cell phone.

Overheard while walking through the crowd: “She’s getting out of cattle mutilation study to move into other areas of investigation.”

I’m just saying.

Jason Greywolf Leigh of Cleburne reported a UFO he spotted in Cleburne last June. Greywolf said he shot daylight footage of an earlier UFO hovering above Lake Pat Cleburne in 1995. All the fish in the lake died that day, Leigh said. Cleburne officials deny the UFO caused the mass fishicide and blame it on heat even though it was only 86 degrees that day, Leigh insists.

“I expected a media circus but was surprised by the number of credible people, people I know, who came in to report seeing something,” said Amy McDonald, a Dublin Rotary Club member. “I believe these people have seen something they couldn’t identify, as to what it was, who knows? As for me, I don’t know. This is a very big universe, and I wouldn’t want to be so arrogant as to believe God maybe didn’t create something else.”

Fair enough.



All systems go for takeoff

It’s been fun, but as the crowds thin I realize how hungry I am and decide to move on. Dublin’s a nice place, and I met a lot of interesting people, including a woman who said she saw a flying saucer the size of a three-bedroom home hover over a Fort Worth street in 1962 and that it had people-like creatures staring out the window at her. She was cool. But truthfully, strangest thing I saw all day was a business just out of town that, according to it’s sign, sells tacos, CDs and boots. It’s a wonder no one thought to market that combo sooner.

As to the truth of glowing orbs, silent, mile-long hovering objects and long-distance visitors — be they green or Katherine Heigl-like — I can neither debunk or confirm. It sure boosts local business though. I suggest Mayor Ted Reynolds open the next council meeting with the announcement that he spotted Bigfoot. Bring some of that out-of-town money Cleburne’s way.